What does it mean to trust yourself?

Trust yourself. How many times have you heard that you should “trust yourself”? Growing up I thought that to trust myself was to to hold onto what I thought about the world to be the absolute truth, and if somebody questioned me it was a simple question of trusting myself that I had the better answer. That is definitely not what trust is about.

Actually, I would say that to trust yourself is somewhat the opposite of holding onto a lot of beliefs about how things generally are. To trust yourself is to walk through the world with ease without having a need to hold onto that many beliefs. On the surface it might seem that the more beliefs I have about myself and the world the better and the more rigid belief structure the better. I mean, it surely creates a feeling of security. Something to point at and turn to when the world does not turn out the way we want to. Certain religions have plenty of rigid beliefs about how things should be, what to do and what not to do, eat and so on. In reality these beliefs are just a way to view the world. And viewing the world through some of these religious beliefs definitely creates a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Back on point, what does it really mean to trust yourself? Actually I would like to say “trust” instead of “trust yourself”, because the second one relates to trust in certain beliefs or concepts you have about yourself. To cultivate a general sense of trust means to trust in that the universe will give you whatever you ask of it. Anthony Robbins says that our brains are like target-missiles, whatever we deep down desire – our brains will find a way for us to get there.

Every thought we have in our minds is an intention. By thinking we create our own reality by intention after intention. By simply pointing our thought towards what we want will eventually give us exactly what we ask for. The key is to ask intelligently, specifically and with clarity. For example, if you have decided to step up and take care of your health you have probably started to work out regularly. That is not enough. You have to consciously ask for good health by thinking about good health. You can work out as much as you want, but if you keep telling yourself “I am fat it sucks” you will never improve your health in the way you really want to.

Furthermore to trust in yourself is basically to trust in that the universe will provide whatever you ask of it. But is it that simple? You ask and you receive? No, not really. You either have to use courage to step outside your comfort zone and get what you want or you have to get out of your own way. Most of the time, what we really want is right in front of us.

The thing is that we have certain habits that keeps us living in the way we have always lived in. Some of them are so strong that even if what we want is right in front of us we do what we have always done and then complain that we do not get what we want. Human beings in a nutshell. The other thing is to use willpower and courage to do something different and get different results. If you do what you have always done you get what you have always got. Change the way you do things and get out of your own way.

Notice when you ask something from reality how it will either appear in front of you in some way , or that challenges will start to show up that will make it possible for you to get what you want. The further away from your current reality something is the more challenges you will have to master to get it or the more you have to get out of your own way in order to realize that what you want is right in front of your face.

Constantly challenging yourself makes challenges less challenging

“And the eight and final rule, if this is your first night at fight club – you have to fight.”

Tyler Durden

When I first thought about writing this article I doubted myself. I questioned if what I know about this subject would be valuable enough to spread to other people. Then I read the title of the article and reconsidered.

What is a challenge? To me, a challenge is something that requires courage. Doing something with fear in your body, or doing something that you do not even consider possible for yourself to do. Challenging yourself is not the same thing as doing something that other people consider strong, courageous or morally correct. Or, to do something that you would consider a challenge compared to what the people around you are doing.

To challenge yourself means to look within. What would require courage for me to go through with right now? Not what challenged you yesterday, but what can actually create that nervous feeling inside of your chest and gut right in this moment. I believe there are few moments in life that could not be made challenging.

Making excuses is the opposite of challenging yourself. For example, if you have decided to step up socially and express yourself freely, you might believe that the only way to challenge yourself in that area is to go out and meet people and push your comfort zone, outside your home. Wrong.

It sure is the most effective way to do that, but let us say that you are not able to leave your house for a couple of nights to do that. What then? Do you comfortably sink deep into your couch and watch Horatio speak one liners left and right? Hell no, you find other ways to challenge yourself.

Challenging yourself comes down to making a decision. And when that decision has been made, you find a way to challenge yourself even though the external circumstances are not the most appropriate. You can even challenge yourself just by using pure imagination.

If you are somebody who has regularly challenged yourself for a long period of time, you have surely encountered other people throwing limiting beliefs at you. “You can not do this, what if that happens?” “No do not do that, other people will think you are weird”. Speaking from my own experience, the limiting beliefs other people will throw at you will mostly circle around a)Something bad will happen in the future if you try this or that. Or b)Other people will not approve you.

These limiting beliefs might seem very strong and that is because they are very often tied together in a web. For example, doing something that other people are not immediately going to approve can be tied together with failure, or embarrassment. When in reality, it really has nothing to do with that, at all.

Creating a lifestyle for yourself where you constantly challenge yourself is a way to find out which limiting beliefs, created by social conditioning, that are in reality completely false and has nothing to do with with who you are. This leads to creating a reality for yourself with less and less beliefs to hold onto, and furthermore these beliefs can possibly not be tied into a web because you find out the truth about them. (Limiting beliefs are a very very common way for people to draw a false feeling of security from) On the surface your new reality might look as weak, but in reality it is stronger.

Brad Blanton, the writer of Radical Honesty, describes this as living in comfortable uncertainty.

It becomes comfortable because it is your new way of looking at things, your new way of life.

You can not change

You can not change who you are. You can change the way you perceive yourself, but how you perceive yourself is not who you are in the same way as how you perceive someone else is not who they really are. You can change the idea of yourself in the same way you can change the idea of someone else, but ultimately your idea of someone else has nothing to do with who they are.

These are good things by the way, changing your idea of yourself and the way you perceive yourself to something positive and awesome. I am not telling you to “not have an ego” or anything stupid like that. I simply want to emphasize the fact that you will never be able to change who you really are, the observer behind your thoughts, your true nature. Which is not the opposite of your ego by the way.

Having a belief that you can change who you ultimately are is coming from a position of scarcity and neediness and is very much the opposite of 'you are enough', a common phrase in RSD. The book Nine Ball by Jeff Allen emphasizes this in a personal yet profound way.

Furthermore, with that belief you can still accomplish great things however, create an awesome personality for yourself(that you believe is who you are) and so on. But in the end it will only create a feeling of lack. Because it ultimately moves you away from your core and adds more layers instead of the opposite.

However do not let the phrase 'you can not change' disencourage you. Because there are things you can change. Do we, as human beings, have free will? I do not know, I do not care. It is irrelevant.

You can change the things in your life - your habits, your values, the way you look at things and so on. These things, such as habits and values, can move you closer and closer to your core day by day. Which is the same thing as 'you are enough'. Ultimately your actions and values will not suddenly make you realize that “oh... maybe I am enough?” but rather move you closer to that core. (Life has no destination, thanks a lot Hollywood.)

You want to live in alignment with your true nature, just as we do as kids. Emotionally, spiritually, when it comes to your physical and mental health and well being and so on. Consciously creating and responsively maintaining habits and beliefs that makes you live in alignment with what has real value in life is the key, I would say. In doing this, you will eventually (re)understand what 'you are enough' means and ultimately 'you are enough' is not something separate from the actual habits that makes you feel this way.

“Social conditioning gets replaced by another form of conditioning. The true strength lies in a return to the origin. A return to nature and natural forms. A return to beastmode.”
-Jlaix

You are enough and therefore you are more than enough to others, not the other way around. However everybody has a socially defined ego to an extent so it is close to impossible to always feel enough in the pressence of other people.

Ultimately why would you want to change who you are? I mean deep down there you have always been enough, haven't you?

Great results are cool but great actions are cooler

I have experienced that if you focus on taking action instead of achieving results you will get more and better results than if you would focus on actually achieving them. If you focus on outcomes too much you will shoot yourself in the foot. Let me explain why.

First of all, from a longterm perspective you want to develop an identity that circles around taking action and not achieving great things and getting tasty outcomes. I would say that the main reason for that is that the former is much more flexible and will serve you in all kinds of contexts in life, whereas focusing on great results is bound to a certain area. For example, if you focus on success with women and what you strive for is to hook up with a lot of girls, then you generally get your results but when you inevitably have to focus on other areas of your life, financial, health or sports for example, and you can not pay that much attention to getting your tasty outcomes(girls). This will probably cause you to go around with a feeling of lack. In comparison, if you develop an identity that circles around always taking action you will easily handle more areas of your life and you can freely come back to whatever area in which you like to develop yourself in.

However, you can have a “taking action ego” and when you eventually get your results that you deep down desire, you will most likely develop a “result based ego”. The thing is to keep inquiring yourself and change your focus to taking action instead of getting outcomes. Furthermore, to focus on taking action does not imply to totally let go of what you want and forget about outcomes. It comes down to having intent and strive for a result but at the same time not really caring if you get the outcome you want. Desire without attachment. To develop desire without attachment, I believe the key is to consistently change your focus to taking action while having a clear idea of what you want.

If you get too caught up in your results you will most likely higher your barrier for success. This is no good, because you will not be able to live up to the success-standard you have created for yourself. On the other hand, if the only thing that you really care about is taking action then that standard(to push yourself and perpetually take action) is something that will develop yourself and at the same time you will most likely achieve even more and better results then if you ran around and thought about outcomes all the time.

Keep reminding yourself of the fact that actions are both cooler and more effective to focus on than outcomes. And when I say focus on I ultimately mean what you perceive as being successful to yourself. So even if you fail you can still give yourself credit for trying because the power does not lie in the result. This is very liberating. Go see for yourself.

Limiting beliefs are not personal

If you are into personal development you have most likely heard about limiting beliefs. For you who have not – a limiting belief is something that you believe about yourself or the world that holds you back.

We all have limiting beliefs, however some of us have more than others. Your limiting beliefs were created in the past when you interpreted reality in a certain way. However most of our limiting beliefs were created unconsciously, without us knowing it.

For example when I grew up I had asthma(I still have) and my parents and other people around me told me that asthma is not good for my health. Eventually that led to me believing that I would not be able to become extremely healthy, although my parents' intentions were not to teach me that. So, a reality for someone can be completely different for someone else. We interpret reality in different ways. To my parents it was obvious to tell me that asthma is not optimal for my health when I asked them, but for me it created a limiting belief about my health in general.

There are different kinds of limiting beliefs. For example if you have no legs, then it is quite obvious that you will have a limiting belief that tells you that you will not be able to play football with the top players in the world. Other beliefs are more subtle, however.

A lot of people in modern society believe that you have to work from 9 to 5 if you want to make a living. I am not saying that society does not need people doing that, however that does not have to make ANYONE believe that they have to be bound to work that way and limit themselves. Another example of a more subtle limiting belief, is that you need to be extremely good looking or own expensive stuff, like cars or apartments, in order to attract women. That is not true.
How are these beliefs that holds us back created? Plenty of them are created due to social conditioning and furthermore they are created when we grow up. However this article will not circle around social conditioning, but why these limiting beliefs are not personal to yourself specifically.

In order to understand fully why most of our limiting beliefs are not personal I want to point out social conditioning particularly. There is an entire system that unconsciously creates and reinforces the same limiting beliefs in people all over the world. That is how impersonal they really are.

Furthermore, if you have a limiting belief about something, let us say that you have an extremely limiting belief about getting girls. If you then even think about getting girls, that will appear utterly outside of your reality. “ How is that even remotely possible. That is just not me.”

Maybe you have believed it for so long that it is now a part of your identity. YOU ARE somebody who is not good at getting girls. That is the evil, limiting and idiotic balloon of doom that I want to stick a needle in with this article. A limiting belief is something you have, not something you are.

It is not bound to you forever and therefore it has nothing to do with who you really are. Nothing. It is most likely something you have picked up along the way of growing up and learning how the world generally works. If you are fat, and believe that being fat will make you unattractive to women, it is not the fact that you are fat that will make you unattractive, but the fact that you believe it will.

The first step of getting rid of a limiting belief is to acknowledge that it exists. The next step is to question it.

Reading this, you will not be able to immediately question and change all of your limiting beliefs. But what you can do, and what you can keep in mind, is that the parts of your life in which you limit and doubt yourself, have nothing to do with you personally.

A very limiting belief, or a web of limiting beliefs brought together, tend to feel like it is holding you stuck where you are. However you are the one holding the limiting belief, not vice versa. Do not misinterpret the fact that limiting beliefs are not personal with not taking responsibility for having them, because taking responsibility is the key to change our beliefs.

My triangle for self fulfillment part three; surrounding yourself with what you want to become

Before even touching the last part of my triangle I want to emphasize the fact that if you have the two first parts down, this part handles itself naturally with some willpower. However, describing this part might give you a sort of “jump start” in all of this and help you get moving a long the way for self fulfillment. And the last part is this: surrounding yourself with what you want to become. Bare in mind that this works in both small and huge contexts, in both easy and difficult challenges. For example if you want to get shitfaced but you do not have any money, surrounding yourself with friends who all has habits to drink a lot of alcohol, becoming drunk is probably not that big of a problem. However if you want to become a master at snowboarding you have to spend a lot of time with experts in this area and furthermore watch what they are doing with great precision for a long time, then try yourself. Fail, and do it again. And learn more, and so on. Surrounding yourself with what you want to become is usually something that people start off with when they decide to get good at something, whatever that is. First of all they are very inspired, which starts to create the vision in your mind. “Maybe I can be like this guy, imagine how cool that would be.”

Another thing that is common when doing this, at least in the early part of one's development is to take value. As you are new (in the context of learning a skill) you are not as experienced as other people and you do not have much of value to offer, so you naturally take more value than what you give. There is nothing wrong with that. And I am not telling you to go out there and suck energy from people in order to become what they are. What I am trying to do is more to create that map , as I mentioned earlier.

When you start to hang out with more people that has the same ambitions as you have, the same superficial desires and what not, early on what might happen is that you start to annoy these people. You know when you are talking to someone and you know that they want something from you, feels bad does it not? It is the same thing here, you are trying to get something from them, whether it is inspiration, tips, strategies or any other kind of value for that matter. They might even unconsciously start to see you as a threat. However instead of putting yourself down for doing this, I believe you can view it as a part of your development, although, it is not a destination you want to get lost in. You are simply doing it so you can become the person you want to become and ultimately so you one day have the capacity to offer incredible value to people, just like the your mentors.

(One thing that I love about personal development and people that are into personal development is that when it is clear that both you and the person or persons you are learning from are all accepting the roles given to them, there is no one causing anyone to be annoyed, because they are all into it because that is what they want. The mentor wants to give and the student needs to take. To me, that is the ultimate beauty of spending time with like minded people who are into self development.)

So how do you practically surround yourself with like minded people and people that you want to be like? It is easy, think about it. If you want to be good at football and your vision is to become a great football player one day, what do you do? You join a team. Let us say that your vision circles around something that is somewhat more complicated and more dynamic than becoming a football player(not at all saying that it is easy becoming an end game football player, believe me I have tried.) Let us say that you vision yourself as someone offering value to people through the Internet. You do not really have a clear option to join a team and go practice offering value through the Internet every week, but what you might find is a forum on the Internet dedicated to this. Or let us say that this forum does not exist, why not create one? In that way you are already offering value through the Internet. My point is that whatever you want for yourself, it is easy to break down how to surround yourself what those kind of people that want the same thing. And believe me when I say that there are people out there that want what you want.

Surrounding yourself with other people that enhances your new sense of self and inspires you towards further action is essentially a process. And as every process, it starts with baby steps.

Firstly you might start to post at a forum related to your passion, then after chatting with the same person on that forum for a while you decide to meet him/her over a cup of coffee and further discuss your passion together. That might eventually lead to building a completely new social circle with people WHO ARE ALL INTO what you are into. And it all started with that single forum post that “RandomDude1739” responded to. How beautiful is that?

In conclusion, consistently surrounding yourself with like minded people takes some courage and requires you to step outside of your current comfort zone. At first you might not find what you are looking for, but that just might be an indicator that your vision is not clear enough and that you are, to start with, not completely sure what you want. Moreover I believe that surrounding yourself with people that you want to be like can be great for learning to realize what your core purpose is. However bare in mind that you do not want to spend a lot of time with people just so you can rely on their identity, you want to develop your own in their company.

Lastly, surrounding yourself with like minded people that encourages, inspires, motivates, criticizes and consciously or unconsciously teaches you things is an internal experience. What I mean by this is that it necessarily does not have to take place in the external world, for example you can easily find like minded people through the Internet and imagine how much you have in common and so on. However I fully believe that the most effective and FUN way to surround yourself with people is to actually be around them as much as humanly possible.

When you are developing a new identity for yourself it is common to experience loosing connection with your friends, a few or even most of them. This, to me, along with other phenomenas related to that, is one of the biggest challenges in self development especially when growing up. However that is material for another in depth article.

To sum it up. The three parts are having a vision, being in charge and surrounding yourself with what you want to become. How these three parts collaborate, enhance or work together is up to you to find out.

My triangle for self fulfillment part two; being in charge

The next part of my triangle for self fulfillment (I am starting to like that phrase more and more by the way.) is being in charge. You could also call it to create your own reality. Nelson Mandela said “I am in charge of my own destiny.” What I mean by this is not to control the people and things around you, but rather to be in control. To fully understand this concept I want to talk about something that you probably have heard of, and that is that there is an outer world and then there is an inner world. Ultimately these “worlds” are not separate, however I like to refer to them as they were. Furthermore there is one reality in which we can see, walk, touch etc and then there is our inner world. Our psyche, our unconscious mind and so on. (Sorry for my poor use of language here but I assume that you get the point.)

To create your own reality, to manifest the vision that you want so badly, you have to realize that this can not only be done by controlling the outer world. It is done by changing the inner world, (also referred to as “inner game”) so that it gives you what you want. To elaborate on this point to make it crystal clear for you too see exactly what I am talking about here I want to give a social example. Imagine someone who deep down assumes that everyone is his friend. This is not something taking place in the outer world, but rather something taking place in the inner world of this person. Sure, it might radiate from him that he has this belief, however that is not the point. Imagine this person socializing and how much more friendly people would be towards him than if he assumed that everyone is an enemy. He is basically creating a “self fulfilling – prophecy” for himself that comes from his inner world, however giving him things(reactions or whatever you would imagine in a social situation) in the outer world.

Ultimately, being in charge comes down to how you set up your inner world. How you expect people to be around you, how you react towards abusive or insulting behavior, how you cope with strong authorities, how you filter and view the social conditioning bombarding you everyday through the media, how peer pressure affects your decision making and how you deal with old socially approved beliefs, norms and ideals that can hold you back.

All those are examples of things that can hold us back and get us off our path, to make us not be in charge. Ultimately you cannot really control these factors and influences(you can try and sure you can control some of them to an extent, but I advice you not to try at all), but what you can do is to set up a strong inner world that fits you the best and creates the most effective self-fulfilling prophecy possible. Furthermore you create an inner world that filters out what you do not get any value from at all, for example other people lamely complaining about you or trying to put you down. Personally I have found that when I am really creating a self fulfilling prophecy for myself I do not even have the energy to give a damn about what other people think of me, for example. By the way, a social self fulfilling prophecy is just one sort of self fulfilling prophecy, and the reason I chose to give it as an example is that it is the easiest one to portray.

So, being in control comes down to having a strong inner world. And by a strong inner world I do not mean a world that is very rigid and unable to change, but rather a world that you are in alignment with. Furthermore, a world that fits you the best in the context of your life and creates the ultimate self fulfilling prophecy.

To elaborate further on being in control I want to introduce the concept of having a purpose. This is probably the key to being in control of your life. Without having a purpose there is not much to be in control of. Having a purpose goes back to the first part of the triangle, however there are two ways in which one can have a purpose. Firstly there is the longterm purpose, the vision. And then there is a short term purpose that has more to do with your everyday actions and habits. I believe that it is extremely important that your everyday actions and habits move you as effectively as possible towards your longterm purpose, or vision.

The difference between having a purpose or not in a situation can be a very subtle thing yet very different. For example, sitting on a couch and resting can be done in two very different ways. One way is to sit sloppy with bad posture and unconsciously letting your mind wander off in projections of future scenarios or recalling previous events. Another way is to consciously focus on your breathing and sit with good posture in a yet relaxed way.

If your vision is to become extremely healthy and get a good looking body, every time you drink a glass of water instead of a coca cola you can gladly approve yourself and give yourself credit that you are moving towards your vision and living in alignment with your purpose.

In conclusion, you want to strive for something in your life. You know, your beautiful vision. You want to move towards positive, uplifting outcomes, however realizing that it all ultimately comes from within. You want to realize that you are the one creating your own beliefs and standards. It is completely up to you to even care if you get the outcome you want. Of course, by reading this you will not immediately be in charge of everything in your life, but you can start to realize that it comes down to setting up an inner world entirely of your own choosing. And more practically you can change your focus to the inner instead of the outer, holding your awareness within yourself instead of chasing around looking for the best possible external circumstances in the world.

However the golden link between part one and part two in the triangle is taking action. Without that no one will ever fulfill or accomplish anything. This article, however, will not circle around taking action as that covers material for an almost equally long article as this one.

To me that is the two first parts of the triangle for self- fulfillment, and ultimately the most important ones. However I realize that both of them are very theoretical and might just work as some kind of source for intellectual understanding, masturbation if you will. So, I wanted to write in a more practical fashion. If you have read about the two first parts you might ask “BUT HOW??” The problem is that there is no ultimate answer to that question. Essentially the only valuable thing I can give you is a map. And the map is not the territory. I personally have no idea where you are in your life at the moment(if I do not know you, I just might) what your “sticking points” are or where you are stuck in your personal development. Because to me that this is ultimately what this is all about. Personal development.